State of Lightning Privacy
summary
Lightning privacy currently offers Bolt12 blinded paths for sender/receiver anonymity and works with LDK enabling onion message forwarding, but notable attacks remain. Probing reveals channel balances; HTLC limits and upfront-fee proposals aim to curb that. Timing correlation from forwarding nodes yields deanonymization—simulations show one central node sees up to 37% of payments and four colluding nodes 72%. AS‑level observers are worse: top five AS see ~80%, AWS ~34%. Ongoing mitigations include receiver‑side delays, MTU message padding (1500‑byte proposal) and cover traffic.
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chapters (15)
- 0:00Lightning privacy model
- 1:07Privacy properties promised
- 3:26Bolt 12 and blinded paths
- 5:36Onion message forwarding
- 6:21Unresolved privacy issues
- 7:06Balance discovery attacks
- 9:40Timing attacks on privacy
- 16:40AS-level surveillance risks
- 21:23Countermeasures for AS attacks
- 22:52Work in progress on mitigations
- 24:41Receiver-side delays for privacy
- 25:01Message padding research
- 27:11Cover traffic and future directions
- 28:15Conclusion and prioritize privacy
- 29:38Q&A on AS attacks and Tor
